Make sure either headphones or speakers are plugged in. An active audio source of some kind is required in order to play Stardew Valley (this will be fixed in update 1.4).

Delete the startup_preferences folder in %AppData%/StardewValley

Go into the game file directly and then into the folder titled “_CommonRedist”, then “XNA”, then “4.0”, then “xnafx40_redist” installer. Once there, run the installer and hit repair.

If you don’t have SMAPI installed, right-click on Stardew Valley in Steam, then go to Properties > Set Launch Options, and make sure it is empty.

Stardew Valley is not launching on Mac

Run the Terminal application (if you’re not sure how, click the magnifying glass in the top right, type Terminal, and select the first result). In the window that appears, paste in the following line (CHANGE “USER” to your username) and press enter:

sudo chown -v “$USER” ~/.config

This should correct the ownership of a folder that Stardew Valley needs to write under.

You’ll probably be prompted for your password by the above command, and then it’ll output something like /Users/yournamehere/.config. Try running Stardew Valley again, and hopefully it’ll work this time.

This will happen if you’re not running from Steam or GOG (i.e. you’re running a standalone version of the game). To fix this, make sure you’re running the game from Steam or GOG.

This can also happen if you’re behind a firewall that is specifically blocking connections to gaming addresses. Check your firewall settings to ensure that Stardew Valley, or gaming services like Steam or GOG are not being blocked. Check the settings on any internet security products you are using, like OpenDNS, as well.